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Taxpayer-funded EAGLE-Net broadband network may need more money

With $96 million of its $100.6 million federal grant committed or spent, EAGLE-Net Alliance may not have enough funds to complete its statewide broadband network.

The project — which has reached less than 25 percent of the more than 220 school districts and other educational institutions that are supposed to have access to its high-speed Internet network — was a focus of a Congressional hearing Wednesday reviewing whether the $7.2 billion federal broadband stimulus program is working.

The quasi-governmental entity received its grant in September 2010 under the stimulus program from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Construction on the network began early last year and has to be completed by the end of August.

NTIA administrator Larry Strickling suggested that complaints about EAGLE-Net are coming from companies that lost bids for a piece of the network build-out.